I am bad at secrets.

I wouldn’t have said this last year. A year ago I would have said something quite the opposite, in fact. I’ve never blabbed something which wasn’t mine to tell, or given up information which I wasn’t supposed to. Technically speaking, I still retain a US government SECRET clearance, and I’ve passed a SERE-C course, part of the curriculum of which is how to retain secrets in the face of actual interrogation. (I would have mentioned my naturally humble demeanor, which makes it easy to keep secrets, as I rarely feel I have news or information of any significance to tell. However, Christina flatly asserts that I am not naturally humble.)

Now, suddenly, we’re expecting maybe twins, but definitely at least one kid, and my instincts are all urging me to shout this news from the rooftops. I live in a penthouse apartment, and there’s a balcony not 20 paces from where I sit right now as I type this. I could literally do this, without abusing the definition of the word ‘literal’, and there are parts of me which desperately want to.

I’m not, though. Instead, we’re keeping the news of the pregnancy fairly tight for now; the only people who know are Christina, me, her mom, her best friend, and an assortment of medical personnel who don’t really count. There are practical reasons for this: we’ve already experienced a miscarriage, and it seemed kinder to simply not impose our troubles on those family and friends who are too far away to help us. What was true then is also true now: there’s still a roughly 13% chance of spontaneous miscarriage, and if it hits, it doesn’t matter how enthusiastic we are; there’s nothing we can do to prevent it. We’re not telling people the good news as a hedge against the case where it all goes wrong; the only thing worse than a miscarriage would be having to also deal with loved ones who only want to help after a miscarriage.

Holding this information close is still so hard to actually accomplish, though. We ate dinner with Christina’s dad and his girlfriend tonight, neither of whom speak English. That’s no reason to bring up forbidden knowledge, even if there exists a language barrier, but somehow neither of us could avoid certain circumlocutions about the matter. He’d only have figured it out if fluent and also Sherlock Holmes, but still, just approaching the topic obliquely was both a terrible idea and also terrific fun.

The plan is to tell our families sometime around Christmas, which is just shy of the end of the first trimester. At that point, the actual risk of miscarriage should be miniscule, and the temporal coincidence is too good; we can present the whole thing as a present. Sometime shortly after that, these documents will go online as my official dad blog, and I get to be one of the crowd of extremely proud fathers-to-be demonstrating our joy online.

That’s only a month from now; you’d think it would be simple enough to just keep my mouth shut. I have, and I intend to keep on doing so; I am not one to actually hand out any news prematurely. Instead, it’s a real challenge. I just want the world to know: my wife and I are expecting! We’re going to have maybe twins! These kids are going to be the best possible kids, and more than that, they’re going to be ours!

Don’t count your chickens before they hatch? Sure, it’s easy enough to say that. The harder part is avoiding disclosure that there exist any eggs.